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Oh my goodness! Think I am getting a bit addicted!
Looky what I found! More gorgeous books!
You can find this one above HERE.
I really love this one. I found it HERE.
And lastly, I love the look of this one too. You can find it HERE.
I cannot reveal whether or not these will be travelling to me or not. But of they do 'happen' to turn up here, I will most certainly give them a review!
Kate xo
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When I saw a little notice on E for Ethel facebook page about crochet classes for newbies I just knew I had to get involved. I have always wanted to crochet but never made the time & certainly didn't know where to start.
The class was perfect for me. $15 for a basic kit of yarn, needle, beverage & raspberry muffin, in E for Ethels cafe, amongst friends for 2 hours.
Bliss.
Here's my first square! Bit wonky, but I made it! Exciting! Like I need another hobby!
Naturally being all enthused, I have been scouring for a good book & I think I've found one that is pretty popular. It has various covers & the cover on the left is out of stock at my fave place, BookDepo, but I noticed the same book with pink cover is not only in stock but its on special & SUPER cheap!
You can check it out HERE or by clicking on the picture. $12.18 - can you believe that? This is the book I will be following along with first if you want to join me on my crocheting journey! No doubt I'll be adding others as I go along.
So anyway, the class was awesome. I however, was not so awesome. In fact, I found it incredibly difficult. My brain would just not compute the stitches, the terminology or the pattern. The teacher [also Kate] explained so very well as did my friend Louise, but I just couldn't get it to sink in. I'm so not a good student. Anyway, after seeing some pictures of what we were supposed to be making and practicing over & over, a couple of basic stitches, things finally started clicking in the last half hour of the class.
Here's my little chain stitch:
And then I progressed to practicing the pattern and doing the little inner circle which them expands out to be the square.
Before I knew it, class was over. I trundled off home in time to put the kiddies to bed. Made Jeff and I a late dinner, fixed a new bed for our little man who had been sick & finally into my warm bed to crochet the night away. I was determined to finish my square last night.
I started to look more closely at the pattern instructions, look at the picture of the final square and came to realise that I could not make the two work. In my mind, the pattern didn't match the end result. I decided I would ignore the pattern and just go with my instinct of how I thought would deliver the end square and I got it. I don't know whether the pattern is wrong or whether I am just not good at following instructions, or both, but I was much better and just working it out myself.
I absolutely have to work on my tension & how I am holding my threads. I am a bit all thumbs at the moment which is making my stitching very loose & wonky. Practice.....
So, now that I know a huge, 2 whole stitches, and have completed a massive, one single square, I think its time to go pro.
I went and bought some lovely colourful cottons & a needle set. It is certainly possible that I will never ever pick up a crochet needle in my lifetime again, but at least I have a very cute basket with all the stuff ready to go should I get the urge to crochet again.
We'll see!
Wish me luck!
Kate xo
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Well lots of things to share about my studio move thus far. These last few months I've been through lots of low points but I'm feeling like I am just starting to kick a few little goals this past week. If you haven't read about why I needed to move out of my current art space & all my new plans, you might want to start reading HERE. Or you could just look at the picture here and see how utterly cramped my space was becoming.
So anyway, as I was travelling on 3 separate occasions in April, I had resigned to myself that my studio move would commence on May 1st! Well May has come and gone and oops, look we are now almost in July! What happened? May 1st came, I looked at my garage, I looked at the playroom, I looked at my art studio, I looked at my makeshift office desk in my bedroom and I must admit to feeling a little bit overwhelmed. So much stuff, so little time, where to start?
Around the same time, my husband changed his work hours & I had built up in my mind that would have this fabulous new routine. A new routine where we would no longer be sailing ships in the night [him working nights] passing each other by and catching up mostly on weekends. We would have hours every evening to work away while the kids were sleeping. Well of course it didn't work out. We are both up much earlier, he to go to work before we are even out of bed, me to get the kidlets all ready for school and then general busyness with the 3 littleies at home. Afternoon comes around so quick and I'm back to school for pickup, making dinner, we are doing homework, then its the bedtime routine and Jeff is all tuckered out & puts himself to bed. I've been left tired and if I'm honest, a bit lonely. I'm also reluctant to go downstairs to work on my studio at night, alone.
So things during the week have been slooooowwwwwwwwww. Little bits and pieces of planning, shopping, organising & packing up things & sorting out things, thats about it. Not much. Weekends have been my only time to get good alotments of time to get cracking on the actual physical moving & setting up of stuff. We also had a run of 6 birthday parties to take the girls too and shop for. And Jeff had a long weekend in Melbourne with his dad. Don't get me started on 3 weeks of family sickness to throw into the mix.
So anyway, a multitude of reasons why things have been taking time. I also needed to formulate an action plan, a different one to what I had originally envisioned. Moving all these things around is like a complete jigsaw puzzle or maybe more like playing chess? I needed to get all the pieces sorted in my head before I played my next [or first] chess move.
So first up I decided I needed to get a place in the house where I could do impromptu blogging, sort school paperwork & do family bill paying etc.
I had been using a long studio bench in my room with a big desktop Mac but both these things were going to be needed elsewhere & had to be packed up.
I decided a little desk next to my bed that could house by Blythes and laptop & some stationery would be the ticket. Great, chess piece number one!
I moved out my old desk & Mac and then went opshopping.
I found this little number at the opshop for $30.
I also found this cute piece for $20 and knew I could do something with that too. It came home also.
I set to work the same day and after priming, decided the desk would look cute in blue. I'll blog a little DIY on the other cabinet very soon.
The very next day, I moved the desk up into my bedroom and set up some books, way too many magazines, my Blythes, diary & laptop etc. Great, now I could blog, pay bills & sort diary. Still a million miles from having my studio even looked at but very much needed. Yay at last some progress!
Following this, I fell into a big slump. I went out to my studio one weekend to start sorting & moving and was gutted to find some flooding. It was cold in my garage and wet in one area. I came in to talk to Jeff about it and started worrying that this was too big a job to be doing. Was I doing the right thing? What if I moved all my papercraft, napkin & fabrics out there only to find that they get flooded, or damp or even worse mouldy!!?!?
For the next couple of weeks, I had to visit & revisit my plans again & again to decide whether or not I would move things out into the garage at all. We decided we are going to to try and get the flooding fixed. I've got someone coming out to look at that for me next week.
I also made the decision that I whilst I could move all my paint stuff out to the studio, I couldn't risk papers or fabrics in the open air if there was a risk of damp. So the decision was made to make my new office to be both an office & a sewing room.
Studio chess move #2 blog post coming up soon.
Kate xo
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Squeeze & Stir? Today I'm talking soup!
Recently I was sent a couple of these coolio squishy tubes to try....
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According to the random number generator the winner is......
I hope you enjoy the book Ainsley!
Please get in touch with your postal address & I'll pop your book in the mail pronto!
Thanks to everyone for entering. You can find this lovely book HERE.
Kate xo
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I recently held a swap of napkins for a bunch of creative ladies, to use in our art making. Napkins flew in from all corners of Australia & over the weekend I set about dividing them all up & sharing them all out.
I will admit to my brain feeling a tiny bit frazzled as I forgot what everyone had in the first place & amongst who they should be shared. But luckily I took photos of each persons napkins sent in and after one or two consults of my photo library I managed to mostly sort myself out.
Hopefully most people in the swap got different napkins for the majority of what they got back, if not all different. There were some large numbers of multiples sent in [which was totally ok] so there were a few times where I had so many that I had to send back at least one or two of those to where they came from just so there was enough variety in all the napkins sets being posted back. If that makes sense?
I also wrote down the quantity of what everyone sent in, which was different for everyone so had to make sure that each person got back that same amount. At one point I got lost but think I managed to get it right in the end.
To top it off, a few lovely people sent extra napkins, cards & other goodies just for me and I then I got all confused who those kind souls were! Thank you so much for those little pressies. Very sweet of you!!!! As a thank you from me, I've added some extra napkins for everyone from my personal collection.
Gee, my organisational skills used to be pretty whiz bang PC [pre children] but things have changed somewhat! Logistics used to be my game but for this exercise I had to consciously plug in my brain [the thinking part] and take out the automatic pilot chip so that I could make it work. Don't anyone sign me up to organise the local chook raffle anytime soon. I'm not yet recovered.
I'm sure I made it way harder than it needed to be. Anyway, all done. I made it! Yay!
Hope everyone likes their new & varied stash.
Thank you so much to all those that took part! I just may do another one later in the year!
Kate xo
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We received a copy of the cutest little birthday book in the post to review recently.
The Best Ever Birthday
by Louise Fulton Keats [recipes inspired by Margaret Fulton].
We already have My Grandmas Kitchen by the same author, Margaret Fultons Grand-daughter, in our book collection at home, so I was delighted to be able to have a look through this one too!
And I have another copy to GIVEAWAY!!! Yay!
If you missed my giveaway, you can find this book HERE.
The book follows a little girl named Lulu who is about to have her birthday & is planning her party. But what theme will she choose? Maybe an Outer Space Party? Maybe a Picnic Party or a Fancy Chef themed party?
There's a very cute story at the start of the book and then generous sections on a variety of themed parties in the second half of the book. There are lots of fabulous themed recipes and the illustrations throughout are gorgeous. One of my main criteria in adding books to our childrens library is that they need to be visually delicious! Illustrator Michelle Mackintosh hasd done a beautiful job in this book.
I love so many of the recipes & cakes in the book. I cannot wait to try some of the rainbow star biscuits [pictured below] and I think my kids are going to love the sausage roll recipe.
Each of my girls had some time alone to pour through the book. Charlottes favourite part was the story which she read herself. She thought it was hilarious when there was a little mishap with the birthday cake! Ooops!
Chelsea, our most recent little foodie, loves the look of the raspberry jellies & also wants me to make the choc top ice creams. She says the other girls can have sprinkles & decorations but she just wants extra chocolate on hers.
Here's the other little book by the same author that we have in our collection and it is every bit as beautiful. I highly recommend both books if you have little people interested in cooking & planning parties.
If you have little people in your life and would like to go in the draw for a copy of The Best Ever Birthday book, please leave me a comment and I'll draw out the winner sometime next week! Go!
Kate xo
Sponsored product talk by Nuffnang.
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I love that my birthday is in May which of course is in Autumn - my favourite season AND approximately half a year away from Christmas so its never too long between pressie spoilings! Who doesn't love pressies? I also have Mothers Day in May too. A thorough spoiling all round!
This year on my birthday all the kids piled onto my bed and showered me with the most beautiful handmade pictures & cards.
I also got some great art supplies; canvas pads, some nice new paint colours & matte spray.
I also got this precious little fox painting by Georgie Bartlam. I have a bit of a foxy thing going on. Blog post on that in the pipeline.
Jeff and I also upgraded our iPad's this year so that was our main present. The kids are all benefiting from our cast offs!
And a little spoiling for myself, some beautiful new colourful beads from LEafFeather on ETSY.
My parents gave me a lovely ring they bought in Paris & a little money to buy something nice with. And I got some gifts from some beautiful friends too. Thank you Georgie for my Dusty Plum necklace. I love it! And thank you Tatum for the bracelets - my absolute most fave colours!
and now for Mothers Day...
This year I woke up around 9am [after a lovely sleep in] to Jeff marching in the little-people-troop, all armed with gifts. Again I got lovely handmade cards & pictures. I got some lovely warm blue uggies for winter too. Lindt chocolates, a handmade keyring from Charlotte & bunch of patty pan flowers. A lovely journal, new cap & supermum magnet.
Jeff also bought me some flowers. I felt very loved & very spoilt indeed.
Kate xo
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Just gotta love a 20% off opshop manchester sale!
Found lots of lovely great condition vintage floral sheets this week & a couple cute tablecloths too. They are all heading for the recycled cushion making chopping block soon!
This gorgeous piece of fabric below was found at one of those tiny opshops where you have to rummage through to find stuff. Often get the best stuff there I've noticed!
Anyway, this was a sweet pillowcase made from the most beautiful linen printed with cherry blossoms and bluebirds. Could there be a sweeter combo? I adore it. I will include some in my cosy cushions soon but I think I might keep a small patch of it for myself too. Its really so adorable. Photo doesn't do it justice.
These beautiful stitched treasures below were gifted to me from my arty friend Louise. I couldn't believe it. So very generous. And they are just so beautiful! You just may be seeing these on some cushions soon too!
Now that my sewing area has been sorted out a bit more, I may be able to sew on a more regular basis. Well, maybe a couple of afternoons a month. That is regular for me! Anyway, we'll see.
Kate xo
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Last year sometime, a lovely arty friend of mine spread the news that DJ Pettitt was coming to Australia! I have long been inspired by DJ and in fact its on my bucket list to one day do an art retreat in America or Europe and immerse myself in painterly fun. Well of course that dream is way off while I have my little ones so dependant on me at home. But having her fly all the way out here was too good an opportunity to miss. So I booked myself in to have a quick little getaway to Melbourne for no other reason than to get messy, meet DJ & work creatively for 3 whole days in a row!
I booked myself into 2 full day workshops with DJ & another metal clay workshop which is something I have been wanting to do for a while. The metal clay one was cancelled just a short time before the art retreat so I was more than happy to book into a 3rd day with DJ.
My first class was a book making & painting class. I decided to do lots of preparation before I even left for Melbourne as I knew if I got to the book binding stage in class, I wouldn't then be able to add free motion decoration to my pages once it was all bound.
So I pre-cut all my book pages, decorated with napkins & paper and then set about decorating with free motion stitching which I taught myself just the week before I left to go away. Below are all my signatures for my book.
The next picture is an example of one of my free motion stitched pages. I did lots of birdcages, crazy decorative swirlies, leaves, trees, flowers etc.
Before I knew it, it was time to pack & get ready for long anticipated trip. I started getting very emotional before I left because I was leaving my babies for 3 nights. I have only been away from them a few nights before and never more than one night at a time [except when in hospital having babies of course!]. I took this picture of me huddled with all my babies just as I was about to leave for the airport. Its not the greatest pic but I truly treasure it. Me & all my best ever creations.
The tears really started to pour as I was presented with these posters from my big girls.
"Dont go to Mellben [Melbourne]" and tears streaming from her little eyes, by Georgia.
And "Pleas dont go to Mellben" with downturned smile, by Charlotte.
Mother Guilt peaking right about then, I tell you!
Here I am, eyes glassy and a bit red but cleaned up in my airport 'selfie'. I did it. I left.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I was actually a bit early for my plane so I promptly then went off and bought the kids presents from the Adelaide airport even before I went on holiday!
At last I arrived. Here I am left with the beautiful & talented DJ Pettitt herself and right with my gorgeous & generous roomie, Louise Nelson [Aussie Scrapping Superstar].
So classes began, every day was wonderful. There was fabulous company. I learned so much about painting from DJ that I think will help me immensely on my own creative journey too. And for that alone, it was absolutely worthwhile making the trip.
I'm not one to really do arty/crafty classes. I'm pretty much self taught in everything I've done so far. The few classes I've taken over the many years I've been art/crafting have mainly been for social reasons or just to keep busy. I'm not really a very good student. I'm not good at taking instruction. Uni was somewhat different, being visual arts, alot of it was exploration & pushing oneself further in art practice. A few technical bits then on you go - do it yourself! And I do like doing my own thing.
I do prefer to just work things out on my work - how things can be used, what I can use it for.... It seems to suit me better & seems to gel in my brain more than having someone else just telling me to do something, just because. I don't know why. Its how I'm wired. Anyway, DJ taught in a language that I understood 100%. And it was so great to hear that she's messy too & she likes to experiment & play too & that she also didn't make a great student either! She certainly passed on great gifts to the class. She was generous with information, she just explained her process & technique & we watched her, absorbed & learned. Oh it was so great!
DJ took this photo below, of me in my apron with my work from the first day. I managed to stitch up most of the inside of the front cover but need to finish the outside stitching & binding in all the signatures. One class I did take at uni that was instruction heavy, was bookmaking, which I'll forever be grateful for as I love making books and every so often I have reason to pull out all my old notes & re-teach myself different binding methods etc. They will come in handy when I am ready to bind this little beauty of a book. And I say 'beauty', as I very much enjoyed the process & it holds very dear memories of the art retreat with DJ.
I used a print of one of my painted girlies for the front cover of my book. You have no idea how long it took me to get this front cover done. I was so lost & going around in circles [see this is what happens to me in classes!] and then DJ suggested I just stop and let it be! Well I put it aside. Once dry, added just a few more details and then that was it. Done. And I am very happy with the end result.
The circle frame around my girly was actually stitched with free motion back home and just painted over and layered over. But it leaves the cover with some nice stitched texture. Ooooh lots of lovely techniques in the process we used.
This is the stitched fabric inside cover. You can see the paper signatures stacked up to the right side and the fabric cover to the left lifts up & lifts over onto the signatures giving it a very large deliciously fat stitched & beaded spine.
Over the next couple of days we worked on various collages & again I chose to use my painted girlies. We had to bring in images to use. I've had this idea in my head for a long time to do a series of windows & doors with my girlies peeking through. You can imagine all the stories you could make up for each collaged piece. Anyway, it was nice to start to play with some of these ideas and bring them to life right there in DJ's class.
Here's one of my favourite & mostly resolved pieces from the art retreat. It was a picture of a window that I printed out and collaged onto canvas with one of my girlies. Under DJ's guidance, I then added painterly effects to blend the collage & make the window photo less of a window but more of a painting. If you know what I mean? There were some little flowers on the window picture but I've replaced the photo look with painted flowers and extended some of those vines downwards. I also collaged in & painted the tree to the right of the window.
Even though I am insane over bookmaking & really was the main reason for wanting to attend the art retreat [DJ makes legendary books], I learned so much about painting AND PATIENCE and LESS IS MORE in this workshop. Invaluable.
Not a great picture but you can see a little closer up. I will be doing prints of this picture for my ETSY soon.
I took lots of pictures of fabulous windows & doors & here's just another example below. This work is largely unfinished. I've just loosely blended the background & collaged in the girl but I have to add lots of painting to this one.
I started off collaging & painting babushka dolls & have done hundreds so far but I think I'm moving into windows/doors & girlies big time now! Watch this space. Its taking over my head. Think its gonna be my thing.
There is so much more in my brain & heart about this fabulous art retreat but I will leave it there for now. Such an amazing experience & I am just so grateful Jeff and the kids let me go and have a little holiday.
Thank you DJ, I honestly had such a great time learning from you. I hope you do come back soon!l xo
Thank Louise for being such a generous roomie & for putting up with my snoring [eeek!!], look forward to catching up soon xo
Kate xo
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